Southern board to vote on whether to declare financial emergency at BR campus

The Southern University Board of Supervisors is scheduled to vote Friday on whether the main Baton Rouge campus will declare a state of financial emergency, called exigency.

Southern Chancellor James Llorens has insisted that nearly all faculty agree to 10 percent furloughs -- time off without pay -- and shorter job termination notices as the only way to avoid exigency because of campus budget problems.

Declaring a financial emergency allows the administration more leeway to lay off tenured faculty and ax academic programs.

Llorens told the Baton Rouge Advocate on Tuesday he is requesting exigency for a one-year period.

The Southern Faculty Senate voted unanimously last week to oppose exigency and the "voluntary furlough and program discontinuance" agreements that faculty received.